FREED FROM BANDITS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 147, 24 June 1933, Page 22

FREED FROM BANDITS

SICILY'S SCOURGE

In 1924 Mussolini declared: "Fascism, which has healed Italy of so many: wounds, will, if necessary, cauterise with lire and hot iron the wound of crime in Italy. Five million hardworking and patriotic Sicilians must no longer be oppressed, held to ransom, robbed, or dishonoured by a few hundred criminals. This problem must also be, and shall be, solved." The man he charged to exterminate the Mafia was Prefect Cesare Mori, and Signor Mori tells in "Tho Last Struggle with tho Mafia" how he did it. , *. ■ ■ For a hundred years or so the Mafia had been the curse,of Sicily—a band of criminals whom ■! ruthlessncss and long custom had elevated into.a position in which they were apparently unassailable. They lived by terror, and they controlled the ballot-box, the law, the judiciary, the whole social life, in fact, of the island. Attempts to stamp out this evil had invariably been such a failure that the Mafiosi regarded themselves, and wero regarded by the Sicilians; as invincible except from internal vendettas, just as ■ the Chicago gangster of today smiles at arrest and is alarmed only by the machine guns of his rival racketeers. It would take too much space to recount here the steps that Mori took to overcome the Mafia, of the clever plan he employed to lull his victims into a false sense of security, the story is most interestingly told in the book. _lori won and won all along* the line. Thcic were 27S murders in Sicily in I<)% and one during the first half ot 19*^0 That is what the elimination, of the Mafia means to Sicily, and that island is once again a paradise of sun.shine' vines, blossom, and oranges, with a population living in peace and security.